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28-12-2025
WASHINGTON: The United States has carried out an air strike against ISIL (ISIS) fighters in northwest Nigeria, US President Donald Trump said.
“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday evening.
Trump said ISIL fighters had “targeted and viciously” killed “primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”
“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” Trump said.
The US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), which is responsible for operations in Africa, said in a post on social media that the air strike was carried out “at the request of Nigerian authorities” and had killed “multiple ISIS terrorists”.
“Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media, warning also of “more to come”, without providing details.
In a statement, AFRICOM said the strike occurred in “Soboto state,” an apparent reference to Nigeria’s Sokoto state.
The US military action comes weeks after Trump said he had ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria following claims of Christian persecution in the country.
Nigeria’s government had dismissed Trump’s assertions saying armed groups target both Muslim and Christian communities in the country, and US claims that Christians face persecution do not represent a complex security situation and ignore efforts by Nigerian authorities to safeguard religious freedom.
Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement shortly after Trump announced the US strike confirming early on Friday that Nigerian authorities were “engaged in structured security cooperation with international partners, including the United States of America, in addressing the persistent threat of terrorism and violent extremism”. “This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West,” the ministry said.
Journalist Shihab Rattansi, reporting from Washington DC, said the threat of US military action in Nigeria had been “percolating for some time” and Donald Trump had accused Nigeria of not doing enough to protect its Christian community in his first term as president but “in the last two months or so, with congressional pressure and the State Department, they declared Nigeria a particular country of concern when it came to the rights of Christians and we had heard that the US had begun overflight surveillance of Nigeria from an airbase in Accra, in Ghana, over the last several weeks. And now we have this,” Rattansi said.
“On Christmas day, the Trump administration acts. This will go down very well with Trump’s Christian evangelical base, I am sure,” he said.
Trump issued his attack statement on Christmas Day while he was at his Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago Club, where he has been spending the holiday.
Last month, the Nigerian government has dismissed claims made by US President Donald Trump about the persecution of Christians in the West African nation, insisting that religious freedom is fully protected under the country’s constitution.
Responding to a reporter’s question at a news conference in Berlin on Tuesday, Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar held up a document whose cover read “Nigeria’s Constitutional Commitment to Religious Freedom and Rule of Law”.
The threats came after the US president had re-designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, a label the US government gives to countries seen as responsible for severe violations of religious freedom. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
